<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Hi all,</div><div><br></div><div>thanks a lot for your advice and experiences! In fact I am very happy with the "overall result" if I may say so, it confirms the way I seem to instinctively prefer (and which I'm sometimes distracted from by rather superficial "career" &nbsp;and "usefulness" &nbsp;thoughts): concentrate on exploring (and having fun with!) PLT, learning about how programming languages work ... perhaps learn Haskell but don't worry too much about Clojure right now.</div><div><br></div><div>Prabhakar, I love your advice about PLAI:</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: fixed-width; font-size: 10px; ">&lt;&lt; If you are enjoying PLAI (and I have nothing to say to anyone who&nbsp;<br>&lt;&lt; doesn't), I think that is the best use of your time at the moment --&nbsp;<br>&lt;&lt; each minute spent on those interpreters will save dozens when you move&nbsp;<br>&lt;&lt; to languages where the features you have implemented are provided as&nbsp;<br>&lt;&lt; part of the infrastructure.</span></div><div><br></div><div>This is exactly what I'd like to do, so with your encouragement I certainly will.</div><div><br></div><div>Noel, I find your answer very comforting too, it too helps me in setting the priorities (for Haskell :-) rather than Clojure or Scala)... Of course, one question...</div><div><br></div><div>&lt;&lt;You might be surprised about jobs w/ Scheme.</div><div><br></div><div>I'd like to be... I have not stumbled about any (in Germany) yet, but also I have not done a real research because I have to collect more experience yet.</div><div><br></div><div>Geoffrey (and also the others who recommended &nbsp;HTDP): yes I've read that (after my first unsuccessful try of SICP), but surely here also reading is not &nbsp;enough and it would certainly make sense to take it out again. If only one had more time... but there's the possibility to review chapters selectively, distributed over time.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks again to all of you! Certainly the community is one of greatest things in PLT scheme.</div><div><br></div><div>Sigrid</div><div>&nbsp;</div><br><div><div>Am 27.02.2009 um 11:03 schrieb Noel Welsh:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 8:10 PM, <a href="mailto:keydana@gmx.de">keydana@gmx.de</a> &lt;<a href="mailto:keydana@gmx.de">keydana@gmx.de</a>> wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">So I'm constantly unsure how to employ this time.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">First, it would make sense to constantly proceed with scheme, in order to be<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">able to perform real-world tasks with it, and also to some day perhaps be<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">able to contribute to a PLT project, which I'd very much like to do.<br></blockquote>...<br><blockquote type="cite">Second, I wonder if for career reasons I should learn Clojure (I'll<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">certainly never find a job where I can use scheme, but who knows what will<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">happen with Clojure in the Java world)...<br></blockquote><br>You might be surprised about jobs w/ Scheme.<br><br>My opinion is that the big idea in Clojure is concurrency, and I don't<br>think it is necessary to learn all of Clojure to understand the<br>concurrency abstractions it provides. However I have not tried<br>Clojure, so I might be mistaken.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">And third, there's the Haskell temptation...<br></blockquote><br>Haskell is worth learning IMO to 1) see how a lazy language works 2)<br>get experience with a modern type system 3) get experience with monads<br>4) understand research papers with examples in Haskell. I found it<br>very easy to get started with GHC.<br><br>You can get some experience of these ideas in PLT Scheme (lazy<br>language, typed Scheme) but they aren't yet as well developed as<br>Haskell.<br><br>Some people have mentioned Scala. I've just started learning Scala so<br>I can mess around with Android in a language that isn't Java. Scala is<br>relatively immature, and I think learning Haskell would teach the same<br>lessons as Scala (type systems) and more.<br><br>Any employer looking for a Scala / Clojure / Erlang programmer would<br>respect your knowledge of PLT Scheme (or Haskell, or whatever else you<br>choose). I don't recommend learning things just because you think<br>they'll be useful for your employment.<br><br>HTH,<br>Noel<br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>